THE CASE AGAINST THE PATENT SYSTEM by Pierre Desrochers Senior Research Fellow, Urban Studies, Institute for Policy Studies, Johns Hopkins University http://www.quebecoislibre.org/000902-3.htm "As many psychologists and historians of technology have shown, innovation does not proceed through major breakthroughs by specific individuals, but rather through the collaboration of different people who, through small and cumulative improvements, yield novel and useful artifacts over time (Basalla, 1988). All of patent law, on the other hand, is based on the assumption that an invention is a discrete and novel entity that can be assigned to the individual who is determined by the courts to be its legitimate creator. The associations of an invention with other existing or past artifacts are therefore obscured. Despite its philosophical foundation, however, the patent system cannot entirely obscure the true nature of technological change. As I have already mentioned, virtually every new patent infringes in some way on other patents. Furthermore, most patented innovation are typically very minor improvements. As the economist F.M. Scherer (1987: 124) has noted: � As the bleary-eyed reviewer of some 15,000 patent abstracts in connection with research? I was struck by how narrowly incremental (adaptive?) most "inventions" are. � Even an anonymous author writing in a brochure of the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (1994: 8) had to admit that 90% of all patented inventions are minor improvements on existing patented devices." Are "Intellectual Property Rights" Justified? by Markus Krummenacker available at: http://www.n-a-n-o.com/ipr/extro2/extro2mk.html Contains a fairly good summary of the sordid history of patent and copyright law, as well as a number of references to good academic studies arguing against copyright/patent validity. CONTRA COPYRIGHT by Wendy McElroy June 1985.THE VOLUNTARYIST http://www.mmsweb.com/eykiw/pf/contra.txt Argues that copyright laws give others control over what you think. The Growth of Intellectual Property: A History of the Ownership of Ideas in the United States William W. Fisher III* forthcoming in Eigentumskulturen im Vergleich (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999) http://eon.law.harvard.edu/property99/history.html Very good history of IP laws in the U.S. by Harvard Law professor, that is generally sympathetic to reducing their scope. It contains this astonishing quote: "Last year, a group of intellectual-property lawyers argued in an article in the National Law Journal that athletic maneuvers could and should be patented. A method "for sailing an America's Cup yacht wherein the yacht sails 10 degrees closer to the wind, for high-jumping higher or for skiing downhill 10 percent faster,' they claimed, could easily be classified as a "useful process" within the meaning of the federal patent statute. If nonobvious and novel, such a technique should qualify for patent protection. After all, if one can patent a new surgical procedure, why not the Fosbery Flop? n2 The chances that the courts would adopt this proposal are not great, but the argument is colorable."
